Cindella: Sibling Rivalry And Oedipal Conflicts Essay

Bruno Bettelheim believes that the fairy tale Cinderella has a deeper meaning than what meets the eye. He shares his beliefs in his essay, “Cinderella: A Story of Sibling Rivalry and Oedipal Conflict” in which Bettelheim explains the underlying complexity of the story Cinderella. Being a Freudian psychologist, Bettelheim believes that a person’s conscious mind takes the fairy tale for face value while the same person’s unconscious mind understands the same fairy tale completely different. The conscious and unconscious minds have a tendency to relate to fairy tale character but in entirely different ways, especially a child’s minds.

Bettelheim presumes that at some point in every child’s life they will relate and feel like they are Cinderella. He thinks that Cinderella is a way for a child to be able to handle conscious and unconscious issues they are going to face, such as sibling rivalry and different stages of the Oedipal conflicts. Bettelheim goes on to tell the reader different emotions a child feels through out his or her life and how Cinderella helps them deal with these unpleasant feelings towards the child’s parents and siblings.

We Will Write a Custom Essay SpecificallyFor You For Only $13.90/page!

The child sees hope in fairy tales, that someday they will be rescued from their current situation just like Cinderella. In his essay, Bruno Bettelheim tells the reader that all children can relate to Cinderella on the level of Sibling Rivalry and Oedipal conflicts. The Sibling Rivalry part of Bethlehem’s essay has some truth value to it because at one time in there life a child “feels hopelessly outclassed by his brothers and sisters”(628) just like “Cinderella is pushed down and degraded by her stepsisters” (629).

But Bettelheim takes his analysis of Cinderella a little too far when he describes how every child goes through a Oedipal stage and is attracted to the opposite sex parent. Making claims that all things expressed in this essay are a universal feeling, Bettelheim tries to prove his point that sibling rivalry and Oedipal conflicts are natural feelings, truth be told that sibling rivalry is common among youngsters but the Oedipal conflicts are less mutual. Fairy tales give children reassurance that they will live happily ever after no matter how bad life gets within a family.

A child does connect with fictional characters on many different levels. As “Exaggerated [that] … Cinderella’s tribulations and degradations may seem to [an] adult” a child can connect with her based on how her stepsisters and stepmother treated her (629). Cinderella shows a child that no matter how bad that he or she feels about their family, things could always be worse, they could be treated like Cinderella is treated. Many children can related to these feelings of despair some time in their life when a sister or brother or mother and father have treated them unfairly; Bethlehem’s point is exactly that.

Bethlehem’s second major point is that every child goes through stages in life where they lust after the parent of the opposite sex; also know as the Oedipal stages. He believes that child is burdened with “guilt [and] desires to be dirty and disorderly… because of the child’s desire to replace the parent of the same sex in the love of the other parent” (633). It is very unlikely that every child goes through such a taboo way of looking at their parents. In many other experts eyes it is not natural to have these types of feelings toward family members, let alone parents.

Bettelheim makes such an outrageous assumption that everyone goes through this stage when in fact not every child feels as though they are in competition for his or her parents love. Although his essay is well designed and original, Bettelheim doesn’t give a clear understanding of how the Oedipal stages work or how every child is suppose to be unconsciously going through them. Bettelheim tries to prove his point that all children have the same common feelings when it comes to sibling rivalry and Oedipal conflicts but fails to convince the reader of the latter.